General

Obama stands on a stage in Tennessee and promises nine million people he’ll give them $3,800 a year each (on average) and the press coos he’s made a “dramatic announcement” then a skeptic asks how Obama’ll come up with the money and Obama has the White House staff tell him, ‘That’s beside the point.’

As cynical politics it’s breathtaking.

In our modern world of five second sound bites, promising something for nothing is more powerful than magic: The President says he hasn’t given much thought to whether he’ll borrow, raise taxes, or cut spending to make every Community College (from the redwood forests to the Gulf Stream waters) free and instead of saying, This fellow’s pulling the wool over our eyes promising us something for nothing – a five second sound bite puts Obama back on top of the world, riding the crest of a PR wave.

Here’s an idea for Democratic legislators, one that could be good politics and good for North Carolina: Help Governor McCrory pass his plan for Medicaid expansion.

After meeting with President Obama at the White House last week, McCrory said he argued for flexibility to develop a “North Carolina plan.” But, as Carter noted during our appearance on WRAL’s “On the Record,” the Governor has to get his idea past not only Obama, but also Phil Berger and Tim Moore.

Here’s where Democrats come in. They can support McCrory’s request to the White House, and enlist our depleted congressional delegation. They can also give McCrory a healthy start on the votes to get expansion through the legislature.

That would present House and Senate leaders with a bipartisan plan. Pass it, and they look reasonable. Kill it, and they start this session just like the last one. McCrory, in contrast, would be doing some deft triangulation that plays well for him in 2016.

Now, McCrory’s idea is apparently to tie Medicaid expansion to some kind of work requirement. Democrats would want to know if that’s unreasonable or onerous. But if they can work out something with McCrory, both he and they come out ahead – as will half a million North Carolinians who need health insurance and millions more of us who are paying their bills now.

David Crabtree and Mark Binker of WRAL hosted Carter and me for this weekend’s “On the Record” show. We talked about the new Congress, the political landscape, Richard Burr’s reelection race, Governor McCrory and Medicaid, Paul Tine’s switcheroo and Jeb Bush.

The show airs Saturday at 7 pm, or whenever basketball ends. It will be online Saturday afternoon at WRAL.com.

At 76, the California governor is still young at heart, bold of vision and quick of wit.

Brown was sworn into his fourth term this week, and he’s off with a bang. He wants to attack global warming by reducing California’s energy consumption over the next 15 years, slashing gas consumption by cars and trucks by as much as 50 percent and having 50 percent of California’s electricity come from renewable sources.

Then he got up a head of steam about his proposed 520-mile high-speed rail line from San Francisco to Los Angeles (price tag: $67 billion).

To critics and skeptics, he said: “People do get pusillanimous. I wanted to use that word because that’s the adjective I’m going to affix to all the critics. You can look it up on your cellphone right now. Pusillanimous. It means weak of spirit.”

He gave the best argument ever for trains "There's no anti-texting rule on the trains. You can use your iPhone. And you can have a martini or whatever you people drink."

Also, "There's also a really big barrier that puts a limit on how many cars—that's called congestion. You can only have so many lanes. You can't keep paving over prime agricultural land. You can't take property off the tax rolls any more than you have to."

The SF-LA line wouldn’t be running until 2030, but Brown is not pusillanimous about that, either: “I’ll be 92 in 2030. I’m working and pumping iron and eating vegetables. I want to be around.”

A poor boy of seventeen Jomah joined ISIS for money then landed in a class to train children to be soldiers; the morning he received his first lesson teachers holding not guns but knives led in three captured soldiers and after the lesson the circle of boys passed around the severed heads.

Ismail, also seventeen, joined ISIS for his own ancient vice: Hatred. Of Bashar al-Assad. When ISIS captured an enemy tribe in Northern Syria he was ordered to help behead every male between fourteen and forty-five – and balked. His ten year old brother stepped up without a qualm to take his place.

Greed, hatred and beheading – it’s like a clock rolled backwards a thousand years then a gate in Hell opened setting Mammon and Moloch and a legion of devils lose in the Levant to torment children while, watching safely behind electronic walls on computer screens, believing we have created a mechanical cure powerful enough to banish the heart of darkness, we stopped debating gay marriage long enough to push a button to send a drone to drop a bomb.

John Boehner, Jeb Bush and Pat McCrory took their first steps this week along a Republican Party fault line that offers peril for each of them – and peril for Democrats if they succeed.

Boehner had to fend off a conservative challenge to his reelection as Speaker. Two dozen right-wing Republicans abandoned him. Lucky for him, 10 Democrats were absent for Mario Cuomo’s funeral.

The same day, Bush moved all-ahead full with a presidential campaign that includes reasonable talk about immigration reform, gay marriage and income inequality, even saying “the income gap is real.” Also striking was what his message didn’t have: the usual red-meat attacks on President Obama.

Governor McCrory sang from the same hymnal, pushing two issues that normally are anathema to the North Carolina GOP: job incentives and Medicaid expansion.

McCrory even asked Obama for help. Basically, he wants cover so he can say he has a “North Carolina plan” instead of a “Washington (read: Obama) plan.”

Democrats will get some jollies watching these less-than-red-hot Republicans walk this precarious precipice. But if the three get by, and look reasonable and effective, Democrats may not be so happy in 2016.

In a realm filled with rumors in the blink of an eye fictions take root in fertile soil and blossom adopting the image of spoken truth like this one you’ve heard a hundred times: ‘Romney lost because he shifted too far to the right during the primaries.’

In fact, the polls told a completely different story

Here’s another: ‘Jeb Bush isn’t conservative enough to win the Presidential Primary’ – this new homily creates a damning circle of logic for Republicans and a heart-warming vision for Democrats: A conservative can’t win the General Election but only a conservative can win a Republican Primary.

Cruz can’t win, Paul can’t win, Bush can’t win, which only leaves one question unanswered: How on earth did the Democrats lose the last election?

You’ve got to love Harry Reid, especially since Republicans hate him so bad.

The Harry-haters were hee-hawing and high-fiving last week after Reid hurt himself exercising. One wrote, “It Couldn’t Happen to a Nastier Guy.” Another speculated that Reid is into kinky sex.

Here’s hoping that Harry will get well and keep giving ‘em hell. He missed the Senate’s first day back, but his history suggests he won’t stop fighting.

Reid, who is 75, keeps in shape by doing pushups, situps and yoga. He was once an amateur boxer. As chairman of the Nevada Gaming Commission, he took on crooked gamblers. One planted a bomb on his family car, but Reid’s wife found the device.

He’s an old-style FDR Democrat. He pushed through Obamacare, which helps more people buy health insurance. And he fiercely protects Social Security, which he calls “the most successful antipoverty program since the fishes and the loaves.”

What will he say about the move by newly elected Republican Senators, including Thom Tillis, to eliminate the food-stamp program and replace it with “more affordable free market solutions”?

Reid is no golden-tongued orator. And he’s conservative on issues like guns and abortion. But he’s a tough battler who torments Republicans. Now, more than ever, with the handmaidens of the rich and powerful in the majority, the Senate needs him.

No predictions or resolutions! Instead let’s ask the big questions for 2015 for the state’s big three political forces: Governor McCrory, Republican legislators and Democrats.

For Governor McCrory, will 2015 be about policy and politics, or about personal ethics? As we tuned out for the holidays, he was eyeball-to-eyeball with the capital media, AP and reporter Michael Biesecker. Nobody blinked.

The Governor will have to deal with a fractious and sometimes unfriendly legislature, navigate tricky issues like Medicaid and the budget, and get ready to run again. All the while, he’ll face tough questions about his business ties.

As Carter noted, how does he explain getting $600,000 from Lending Tree and what does he think about the company’s shady-looking business practices? As Republican legislators asked privately, how does he defend selling Duke stock after the coal-ash spill? And what exactly did he do, and for whom, at Moore and Van Allen?

For Republican legislators, do they continue running student-body right, or run to the middle? What do they do about teacher pay in a tough budget year, especially after many of them ran last year on a promise to raise it to the national average?

For Democrats, how do they come back? As usual, they’re divided over the state party leadership. Some of them are discouraged and disappointed after high hopes were dashed in November. Others see hope in how much better they did here than Democrats across the South and the country.

A big question will be where to put their emphasis, and their money, for 2016. Get ready for Hillary? Concentrate on Cooper? Pick up more state House seats? Invest again in the tough Senate districts? Challenge Richard Burr? Fill Council of State vacancies? And how do they recruit rising stars for local offices?

For all three political teams, these are decisions that shape futures – theirs and the state’s.

The President, unhappy with North Korea, announced he was going to ‘proportionately’ respond and the next day North Korea’s Internet went black which possibly is a coincidence but may also be proportionate.

Now, to be clear, getting hacked by North Korea is a little like getting bitten on the ankle by a small varmint. There’s no need to start a war over it. But there is an unanswered question: That varmint wouldn’t bite a Bengal tiger – so how is it the good ole U.S.A. doesn’t get the same kind of respect?

How did we get to be Pollyanna – instead of John Wayne?

And that’s why the President’s choice of that word ‘proportionately’ is troubling. It sort of sounds like he’s saying, You nipped us, so we’ll ding you back. Which lacks a certain warrior spirit. Which helps engender respect in varmints like Kim Jong-un.